Method and apparatus for implementing extensible network-attached secondary storage

Abstract

A storage comprising an object access module for the shared part for implementing advanced I/O provides an interface (121) for registering and deleting object description data declaring how to store objects within a second storage, in order to reduce the development cost of modules for implementing functions. Also, in order to reduce the total cost of ownership, modules are transferred to the storage through a management computer. The present invention allows the storage for contiguously providing functions effective to a vast range of applications to be provided with lower development cost as well as lower total cost of ownership.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0001]1. Field of the Invention[0002]The present invention relates to a computer system, more specifically to a method and an apparatus for implementing extensible secondary storage, suitable for application programs.[0003]2. Description of the Related Art[0004]Primary components in a modern computer system include computers (one computer comprises a processor, memory, and peripheral devices), a network, and a secondary storage. The storage heretofore was considered as a device attached to a computer, however the situation has been changed recently.[0005]At first, there become common in recent years that a plurality of computers shares a single storage, because of the widespread usage of network. The processing power of the computer attaching the storage may become a bottleneck to cause storage input / output (I / O) from another computer through a network to be slowed down.[0006]Secondly, The storage capacity and the throughput required for a storage increase...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0049]The development cost may be reduced by writing in the declaration the declarative part of the way to store objects in a secondary storage (in which part of which block and in which order the object is stored). Thus in accordance with the present invention, object description data is introduced, which describes declaratively the way to store objects in secondary storages.

[0050]By enabling the object description data to be downloadable from a computer to storage, the e...

Problems solved by technology

The processing power of the computer attaching the storage may become a bottleneck to cause storage input/output (I/O) from another computer through a network to be slowed down.

Secondly, The storage capacity and the throughput required for a storage increase from year to year.

As a result, the number of storages attached to a single computer may grow up so that the computer may become the bottleneck of the storage I/O.

If the range of application is sufficiently vast, that may lead to larger market, and then larger market may lead to some decrease of development cost and to some increase of development speed.

Although there have been proposed a number of machines proprietary for database usage, these machines was difficult to have sufficient competitive power to survive among other multi-purpose machines using versatile devices, because these da...

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